4Q 2015, Michigan. [Excerpt draft from upcoming The Truman Prophecy.]
And it came to pass in the SLOW (Spartan Land of the Wolverine) and in most other subrealms of the LOWDOWN—to be uttered in a deep Darth Vader-like voice—(Land of Worship for Deathstar Operations Worldwide No-Exceptions) that a onetime major—albeit never conventionally successful—movement for freedom sputtered to a halt. That ultimately petering-out political enterprise would be the Libertarian Party of Michigan (LPM) and Libertarian Party (LP) in general.
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. [Good manners, consideration] … and formal politeness provide the lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as ’empty,’ ‘meaningless,’ or ‘dishonest,’ and scorn to use them. No matter how ‘pure’ their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.
— Sayings of Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love, Robert Heinlein Continue reading
In the 1990s a group of Neoconservatives under the auspices of the Western finance-capitalist oligarchy—often referred to by its opponents (and by itself) as the 